A Saskatchewan miner is fighting for his life after an underground accident at Agrium Inc.'s Vanscoy potash mine left him badly injured early Monday morning, according to the president of United Steelworkers Local 7552.

A 29-year-old man is fighting for his life after an underground accident at Agrium Inc.’s Vanscoy potash mine, according to the president of United Steelworkers Local 7552.

“He remains in hospital, and he’s in critical condition,” said Darrin Kruger, who raced to the mine around 3:15 a.m. Monday after receiving a phone call about the man’s injuries.

Todd Steen, general manager of the mine, said the accident happened around 2:45 a.m. Monday and left the worker trapped between two pieces of mining equipment with “serious injuries.”

Because it occurred “several miles” from the mine shaft, the man had to be transported by the mine’s emergency response team to the shaft before he was lifted to the surface and rushed to hospital, Steen added.

“We were able to get him to hospital in a very timely manner, I think. The family, of course, was notified immediately and has been with him ever since.”

Paramedics responded to the mine at 2:50 a.m. and transported the man to Royal University Hospital in Saskatoon with “life threatening injuries,” MD Ambulance spokesman Troy Davies said in an email.

While a complete picture of what happened deep underground has yet to emerge, the company, the union and the government are investigating, Kruger said.

“(Then) we can truly understand the circumstance around this incident — what happened, and what steps need to be taken to prevent future occurrences so that nobody else gets injured.”

A spokeswoman for the provincial Ministry of Labour Relations and Workplace Safety said the ministry is inspecting the site. She declined to provide additional details while the investigation is ongoing.

Employers are required to notify the ministry’s Occupational Health and Safety Division of any workplace fatality or injury requiring three days’ hospitalization, as well as any “dangerous occurrence.”

Steen said the Calgary-based fertilizer company ceased operations production at the mine immediately after the incident and will establish a safe restart plan before bringing it back into production.

“Our approach is that we take steps at all times to understand the kind of risks that we have, because it is a mine and milling operation, and there are risks,” he said.

This is not the first serious accident at the mine, which employs more than 600 people and is located about 30 kilometres southwest of Saskatoon.

A fire in February 2014 trapped more than 50 miners underground for about 15 hours until a team of emergency workers extinguished the blaze. No one was injured.

In July 2013, Andrew Hann, a 25-year-old from Newfoundland, died after falling about 20 metres from a steel scaffold. Hann was employed by a construction company contracted to work on a mine expansion project.

Edward Artic, a 59-year-old electrician, died in the mine’s above-ground mill in May 2010 when a load being lifted into the building struck his head.

In 2006, 29-year-old Paul Goddard’s spinal cord was severed when about 900 kilograms of rock fell on him, pinning him to a conveyor belt. Goddard was paralyzed from the waist down and suffered two broken arms.

Mining is inherently risky, but Saskatchewan’s underground operations are statistically safer than the average workplace in the province, according to Saskatchewan Mining Association president Pamela Schwann.

The province’s mining sector has done a good job driving down instances of time lost due to injury, but there is more work to be done when it comes to eliminating serious injuries and deaths, Schwann said.

“One accident is too many … We might have a low injury rate, but it’s not zero, so we have to work for continuous improvement.”

Steen declined to identify the worker involved in Monday’s accident. Kruger said he wouldn’t name the miner out of “respect for his family.”

“They’re a close-knit family,” Kruger said. “They’re all there beside him, relying on one another. And of course the mining crews are families themselves, so they’ve had lots of support from coworkers … That’s where everybody’s focused their attention.”

This Week's Flyers

Comments

We encourage all readers to share their views on our articles and blog posts. We are committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion, so we ask you to avoid personal attacks, and please keep your comments relevant and respectful. If you encounter a comment that is abusive, click the "X" in the upper right corner of the comment box to report spam or abuse. We are using Facebook commenting. Visit our FAQ page for more information.